Teamwork : Team Building without Time Wasting

Marshall Goldsmith is one of the world’s foremost authorities in helping leaders achieve positive, measurable change in behavior: for themselves, their people and their teams. He is Founder of Marshall Goldsmith Partners (www.marshallgoldsmith.com)

Marshall is a founding director of A4SL - The Alliance for Strategic Leadership, a consulting alliance that includes over 200 top professionals in the field of leadership development (http://www.A4SL.com). He is also the co-founder of the Financial Times Knowledge Dialogue, a videoconference network that connects executives with the world’s greatest thinkers. He has a Ph.D. from UCLA. He is on the faculty of the global executive education program for Dartmouth, Michigan and Oxford (UK) Universities. Marshall has partnerships with Hewitt Associates and Russell Reynolds to provide coaching for leaders around the globe. He has served on the Board of the Peter Drucker Foundation for ten years.

Howard Morgan is the founder of 50 Top Coaches, a collective of many of the world's leading executive advisors. He specializes in coaching as a strategic change-management tool. He is co-editor of the book "The Art and Practice of Leadership Coaching : 50 Top Executive Coaches Reveal Their Secrets" (John Wiley & Sons, December 2004)

Teams seem to be becoming more and more common and important. Management theorists and organizations around the world are extolling the value of teamwork. As the traditional, hierarchical school of leadership begins to diminish in significance, a new focus on networked team leadership is emerging to take its place. Leaders are finding themselves as members of all kinds of teams, including virtual teams, autonomous teams, cross-functional teams, and action learning teams.

Many of today’s leaders face a dilemma, as the need to build effective teams is increasing, the available time to build these teams is often decreasing. A common challenge faced by today’s leaders is the necessity of building teams in an environment of rapid change with limited resources. The process of reengineering and streamlining, when coupled with increased demand for services, has led to a situation where most leaders feel they have more work to do and fewer staff members to help them do it.

Research involving thousands of participants has shown how focused feedback and follow-up can increase leadership and customer service effectiveness.(1) A parallel approach to team building has been shown to help leaders build teamwork without wasting time. While the approach described will be simple it will not be easy. It will require that team members have the courage to regularly ask for feedback and the discipline to develop a behavioral change strategy, to follow-up, and to “stick with it.”

To successfully implement the following team building process the leader will need to assume the role of coach or facilitator, and fight the urge to be the “boss” of the project. Greater improvement in teamwork will generally occur if the team members develop their own behavioral change strategy than will occur if the leader develops the strategy and imposes it on the team. This process should not be implemented if the leader has the present intention of firing or removing a team member.

Steps in the Process…

Begin by asking each member of the team to confidentially record their individual answers to two questions: a) “On a 1-10 scale (with 10 being ideal) how well are we doing in terms of working together as a team?” and b) “On a 1-10 scale how well do we need to be doing in terms of working together as a team?”

Before beginning a team building process it is important to determine if the team feels that team building is both important and needed. Some groups of people report to the same manager, but legitimately may have very little reason to work interactively as a team. Other groups may believe that teamwork is important, but feel that the team is already functioning smoothly and that a team building activity would be a waste of time.

Have a team member calculate the results. Discuss the results with the team. If the team members believe that the gap between current effectiveness and needed effectiveness indicates the need for team building, proceed to the next step in the process.

In most cases team members do believe that improved teamwork is both important and needed. Recent interviews involving members from several hundred teams (in multi-national corporations) showed that the “average” team member believed that his/her team was currently at a “5.8” level of effectiveness but needed to be at an “8.7”.

Ask the team, “If every team member could change two key behaviors which would help us close the gap between where we are and where we want to be, which two behaviors should we all try to change?” Have each team member record their selected behaviors on flip charts.

Help team members prioritize all the behaviours on the charts (many will be the same or similar) and (using consensus) determine the two most important behaviors to change (for all team members).

Have each team member have a one-on-one dialogue with each other team member. During the dialogue each member will request that their colleague suggest two areas for personal behavioural change (other than the two already agreed upon for every team member) that will help the team close the gap between where we are and where we want to be.

These dialogues occur simultaneously and take about 5 minutes each. For example, if there are seven team members each team member will participate in six brief one-on-one dialogues.

Let each team member review his/her list of suggested behavioral changes and choose the two that seem to be the most important.Have each team member then announce their two key behaviors for personal change to the team.

Encourage each team member to ask for a brief (five minute), monthly “progress report” from each other team member on their effectiveness in demonstrating the two key behaviors common to all team members and the two key personal behaviors. Specific suggestions for improvement can be solicited in areas where behavior does not match desired expectations.

Conduct a mini-survey follow-up process in approximately four months. In the mini survey each team member will receive confidential feedback from all other team members on his/her perceived change in effectiveness. This survey will include two common items, the two personal items, and an item that assesses how much the individual has been following up with the other team members. The mini-surveys are simple enough to be put on a postcard and might look as follows:

Have an outside supplier calculate the results for each individual (on all items) and calculate the summary results for all team members (on the common team items).Each team member can then receive a confidential summary report indicating the degree to which colleagues see his or her increased effectiveness in demonstrating the desired behaviors. Each member can also receive a summary report on the team’s progress on the items selected for all team members.

“Before and after” studies have clearly shown that if team members have regularly followed-up with their colleagues they will almost invariably be seen as increasing their effectiveness in their selected individual “areas for improvement”. The group summary will also tend to show that (overall) team members will have increased in effectiveness on the common team items. The mini-survey summary report will give team members a chance to get positive reinforcement for improvement (and to learn what has not improved) after a reasonably short period of time. The mini-survey will also help to validate the importance of “sticking with it” and “following-up.”

In a team meeting have each team member discuss key learnings from their mini-survey results and ask for further suggestions in a brief one-on-one dialogue with each other team member.

Review the summary results with the team. Facilitate a discussion on how the team (as a whole) is doing in terms of increasing its effectiveness in the two key behaviors that were selected for all team members. Provide the team with positive recognition for increased effectiveness in teamwork. Encourage team members to keep focused on increasing their effectiveness in demonstrating the behaviors that that they are trying to improve.

Have each team member continue to conduct their brief monthly “progress report” sessions with each other team member. Re-administer the mini-survey (in four- month intervals) after eight months from the beginning of the process and again after one year.

Conduct a summary session with the team one-year after the process has started.Review the results of the final mini-survey and ask the team members to rate the team’s effectiveness on where we are vs. where we need to be in terms of working together as a team. Compare these ratings with the original ratings that were calculated one year earlier. (If team members followed the process in a reasonably disciplined fashion, the team will almost always see a dramatic improvement in teamwork.) Give the team positive recognition for improvement in teamwork and have each team member (in a brief one-on-one dialogue) recognize each of his her colleagues for improvements in behavior that have occurred over the past twelve months.

Ask the team if they believe that more work on team building will be needed in the upcoming year. If the team believes that more work would be beneficial, continue the process. If the team believes that more work is not needed “declare victory” and work on something else!

Why This Process Works

The process described above works because it is highly focused, includes disciplined feedback and follow-up, does not waste time, and causes participants to focus on self-improvement. Most survey feedback processes ask respondents to complete too many items. In such surveys most of the items never result in any behavioral change and participants feel they are wasting time. Participants almost never object to completing four-item surveys that are specifically designed to fit each team member’s unique needs. The process also works because it provides ongoing feedback and reinforcement. Most survey processes provide participants with feedback every 12-24 months. Any research on behavioral change will show that feedback and reinforcement for new behavior needs to occur much more frequently than a yearly or biyearly review. A final reason that the process works is because it encourages participants to focus on self-improvement. Many team-building processes degenerate because team members are primarily focused on solving someone else’s problems. This process works because it encourages team members to primarily focus on solving their own problems!

Let me close with a challenge to you (the reader) as a team leader. Try it! The “down-side” is very low. The process takes very little time and the first mini-survey will show very quickly if progress is being made. The “up-side” can be very high. As effective teamwork becomes more and more important, the brief amount of time that you invest in this process may produce a great return for your team and an even greater return for your organization.